Survivor Season 23 Episode 7

Trojan Horse

Recap

The seventh episode of Survivor: South Pacific essentially started with the duel on Redemption Island with little happening prior. The two contestants, Christina and Mikayla, had to use the planks of a box to construct and cross a bridge and then use some of the planks to solve a puzzle. Mikayla got out to an early lead, but Christina was able to recover on the puzzle and stay in the game.

After the challenge, Ozzy expressed his concern over Christina returning to the game to Cochran. Forgetting that Christina is extremely bitter at her Upolu tribe, Ozzy confided in Cochran that if Savaii lost the immunity challenge, he’d volunteer to go to Redemption Island. His theory was that he was their best bet to beat her in a challenge and ensure that Savaii got a member back when the tribes merged.

At the Upolu tribe, Coach concocted an elaborate plan to reunify his tribe after the divisive tribal council last week. He started by creating a quest for the tribe to find the hidden immunity idol which motivated the group to work as a team. Of course, Coach already had the idol, so he and Sophie had to slip away only to return having “found” the idol. The ruse worked as those who did not know about the idol – Brandon, Edna and Rick – were very excited.

For the immunity challenge, each tribe would create three pairs of players to work together. Two pairs would be blindfolded and navigate an obstacle course based on the call outs of the third, non-blindfolded pair. Along the way the two pairs would pick up bags and when all four were collected would use their sense of touch to organize four sets of masks contained within the bags.

Both tribes were neck and neck for the majority of the race until the switchover between the third and four leg of the course. Cochrane was responsible for disconnecting the team coming off the course from the guide rope and reconnecting the team going back out, but did more damage than good on the changeover. Jim was forced to come off his perch to help untangle the teams, but Savaii had fallen too far behind to catch up.

That night, after the challenge, the Savaii tribe wasted no time pointing their fingers at Cochrane for the loss and suggesting that going to Redemption Island would be good for him to literally get redemption for his mistake. The next morning, however, Ozzy revealed his plan to the tribe and, despite objections from Jim and Keith, gave his idol to Cochrane and was sent to Redemption Island by his tribe.